< o 



























V.,aV* 



\0 -7*. • i ? * vO Vj 









*^-v 






e «. o '■' 


^^*^ 





jr>; 









*u ^v • '-f^^^ 



•0^ : : "'bV' '^0 

^- • ^^-^K ^9. 






- o ,0 . ^ • • ' ^ 



"t^ L.v-->'»o^t^,.-K>T.d^rt^ (^ hh^ Cu.<.X>IL.c^^ ^ 



Some Jersey Dutch 
Genealogy 



An Address at the Annual Meeting of the Genealogical 

Society of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia, 

March 5, 1906. 



Bu WILLIAM NELSON 



Some Jersey Dutch 
Genealogy 



An Address at the Annual Meeting of the Genealogical 

Society of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia, 

March 5, 1906. 



By WILLIAM NELSON 



PATERSON HISTORY CLUB 

Paterson, N. J. 
19 12 



t/55 



/^/^ 



One Hundred Copies 

Reprinted from Publications of The Genealogical Society 

of Pennsylvania, March, 1910, 

Vol. IV., pp. 125-140. 



Kv\C. 
CParion) 



l*>^ 



Some Jersey Dutch Genealogy. 



It was a little Jersey Dutch girl at I'atcrson whcj, when 
she went to schc>ol and was asketl by her teacher the nativ- 
ity of her parents, replied that they were Dutch. "Hig^h 
Dutch, or Low Dutch?" queried the teacher. The little 
girl, with a certain mistaken pride, answeretl, "High 
Dutch, of course." Your true Hollander would think it a 
waste of time to argue that the Nederlander — the I>(>w- 
lander — is as good as the High Dutchman — if not a little 
better, with his centuries of as glorious history as is written 
in the annals of Time. The original white settlers of the 
present Bergen and Passaic counties, in New Jersey, were, 
with scarcely an exception, from Holland, and their de- 
scendants to this day give a marked tone to the communi- 
ties in those counties, and have materially affected the 
public spirit in the adjacent counties of Morris and Essex, 
while Hudson county still feels the influence of its original 
Dutch ix)pulation, as in the days when it was generally 
known as Bergen. It may interest you to hear something of 
the experiences of those who investigate the genealogies of 
these old Jersey Dutch families. But first let me say a word- 
about the language. The older survivors of the descendants 
of the first settlers still adhere to a speaking knowledge of 
the tongue brought over by the seventeenth-century immi- 
grants from the Netherlands, but I have never met one who 
could read it. altho they often produce with pride and a 
certain puzzled air. the ancient, huge Dutch Bible, in vast 
foHo, bound in oak boards half an inch thick, covered with 
leather, and held together with enormous brass clasps and 
corner pieces. This language seems, from a comparison 
with the older Dutch dictionaries, to be substantiallv the 



SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 



same as that spoken by the original settlers, with the ordi- 
nary variations of dialect according to the Province from 
which the immigrant came. Natives of New Jersey, acais- 
tomed to the Jersey Dutch language, have found it quite 
easy to make themselves understood in Holland today. 

Forty years ago the language was commonly spoken on 
the streets, in the market place and in the shops of Pater- 
son. Now, it is seldom heard. The earlier church records, 
of course, are all written in Dutch. To interpret them it 
is well to use a dictionary of date contemporary with the 
records, the l^etter to get the meaning, and to find the same 
spelling — for Holland, with all her conservatism, adopted a 
simplified spelling something like eighty years ago. 

CHURCH RECORDS. 

1 know of no Church records in New Jersey or elsewhere 
to compare with those kept by the earliest clergymen of the 
Reformed Dutch churches of New York and New Jersey. 
]n New York, as you are of course aware, the records of 
the Dutch church reach back to 1630, and are remarkably 
full and complete. The records of the Reformed Dutch 
church of Bergen (now Jersey City) extend back to 1661; 
Hackensack, to 1686, and Acquackanonk (now First Re- 
formed, Passaic), to 1726. The records in these New 
Jersey churches are all kept in substantially the same form. 
In the case of marriages, for example, they are arranged 
thus: 

1697 Elyas Bartely, j. m. geb. Nieuw England 

April 17 Cornelia Cornelise, j. d. geb. an de Bouwerij 

April 24 David De Maree, j. m. geb. Nieuw Haarlem 

Sara Berthold, j. d. geb. Sluijs, Vlaanderen 

1699 Siaque Vigoor, wedr. van Catryn Pisiaer 
April 8 Neeltje Buys, wed. van Jan Koerte 



SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 



s 



Sept. 28 Heer Rynier Van Gyssc. wcdr. van Dircktii- Coriu-Iisso van 
Groenlaiid 
Hciulricktio lUiys, wed. van C"i>rnolis Vcrwt-y. 

You would not want mucli t'Mllcr genealogical data than 
those, would you '^ 

Tlie Ixiptismal reccrds are likewise a juy to the si-archer. 
They give the names of the father, the full maiden name 
of the mother, name of the child, date of baptism, and 
names of the godparents or witnesses. Often the date of 
the birth of the child is also given, and frequently other 
information. Here is a sample from the Hackensack church 
records : 



1696 

Roelof Maortoii Powelse 

Dec. 27 Margritie Westerveldt 

1697 

Jaquemintie David, zoon van Jan DeMaree 

Sept. .Antie Sloth 



1699 
David 
Jan. 15 



Roelof Wc-stcrvcidt en 
moeder Gecsit- Wes- 
terveldt 

Jan Pieter.se 

Jan DeMaree de jonge 
Abeltie Pieter.se Sloth 



David DeMaree, zoon van David Samuel DeMaree 
Sara Bertholf Rachel Karson. zyn 

grootmoeder. 



Here you have the full names of the parents, and in 
several cases even of some of the grandparents. 

It is amusing to observe the difficulties of those old 
Dutch Dominies in their wrestling with the strange spelling 
of French, English and Scottish names, for the sounds of 
which there were no precise equivalents in the Dutch. 
"Siaque," for instance, was an attempt to give the sound of 
the French Jacques. But one of the worst efforts was the 
name "Tsjems Tsjansen," entered in the Hackensack lxn>- 
tismal register in 1726. You would have to put yourself 
in the place of the Dutch Dominie, and try to utter the 



SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 



singular name, '*J^"i^s Johnson," with no letters to render 
the sound of "J-"' 

You have noticed that the full maiden name of the 
mother is given in the above baptismal records. The Dutch 
girl never lost her name, never merged it in that of her 
husband. All through life she was known by her maiden 
name, as Marritje Van R)'pen, wife of Dirck Van Houten. 
So it was in the church records; so it was in legal instru- 
ments; so it was on her bedding; and when she went on to 
join her ancestors, it was thus inscribed on her tombstone. 
Moreover, in the earlier days she usually added to her bap- 
tismal name her father's name, with the genitive affix, 
"se," so that you will often find the woman's name, all 
through life, Marritje Dirckse Van Houten, meaning that 
she was Mary, daughter of Dirck Van Houten. How 
immensely helpful this is to the genealogist. I think it 
means, too, that these Jersey Dutch mothers felt a full sense 
of their dignity and importance, and believed they had at 
least an equal share in all the responsibilities of the family. 

PERPETUATION OF CHRISTIAN NAMES. 

Another custom of the Jersey Dutch people is also of 
great assistance to the student of family history. It was the 
rule to name the first son after his paternal grandfather, the 
second after his father, the third after his maternal grand- 
father, and the fourth, fifth, sixth, and so on, after his 
uncles on both sides. Similarly, the girls were named, the 
first, after her maternal grandmother, the second after her 
mother, the third after the paternal grandmother, and the 
rest after her aunts. I say this was the rule, although like 
most rules, it was frequently deviated from. But with this 
practice in mind, and observing the names of the persons 
present at the baptism of a child, it is comparatively easy, 
in most cases, to identify the parentage of father and 



SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 7 

im>tlRT. for in each l)ai)tisni you have three gaicrations 
linked together. 

So persistent has this custom l>een. that wherever you 
find the Christian name Adrian, you may l)e sure you can 
trace the lyearer hack to Captain Adrian Post, who came to 
Staten Island in 1650; the name Ralph is invariably duo 
to Roelof Cornelissen. the ancestor of the Van Houtens; all 
the Rvniers get their name from Rynier Van Giesen. who 
came to New Xetherland in 1656; all the Gerrits owe their 
name to Gerrit Gerritsen. who came over in i66o: nearly 
all the Michaels arc indebted for their name to Michiel 
lanse, who settled at Renselaerswyck in 1636. and ten 
vears later removed to Bergen; all the Hartmans derive 
their name from his wife, Fytie Hartmans; wherever you 
find the name Waling, which is no longer often, you may 
be sure its owner descends from Wealing Jacobs, born in 
1651; in the Wan Winkle family you will find the name 
Simon or Simeon, after the progenitor of the family, dating 
back to 1655 and earlier. Edo is a persistent family name 
among the Merselises; Uriah comes from the ancestor of 
the Van Ripers. who was known as Uriaen Thomasse. The 
student of the history of these old Dutch families acquires a 
sort of instinctive knowledge of the ancestry of a person, as 
soon as h€ hears the names of his parents. 

THE PATRONYMIC PUZZLE. 

1 have six)ken thus briefly of some of the remarkable 
helps to the genealogist in the customs of these j^eople. 
Tlie amateur will find much difficulty, on the other hand, 
in trying to trace the descendants of some of the first 
settlers. You are familiar here in Pennsylvania, with the 
.Swedish and Welsh fashion of using patronymics, instead 
of surnames. This usage was prevalent among the first 
settlers of New Amsterdam, as surnames were still com- 
paratively unknown in Europe in their day. 



SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 



Thus, one of the patentees of Acquackanonk, in 1685 
(the territory now occupied in part by the cities of Paterson 
and Passaic, and by the township of Acquackanonk), was 
Hendrick Joris, meaning simply Henry, son of George. 
He and his descendants took the name BHnkerhoff, now- 
written Brinkerhoff. 

Gerrit Gerritse, already mentioned. Avas simply Gerrit, 
son of Gerrit. Many of his descendants to this day are still 
known as Garrison, while others took the name van Wagen- 
ingen, after the village in Holland from which he came, 
their name being usually now written Van Wagoner. An 
explanation of this change, evidently manufactured to 
account for the fact, is this: Peter Gerritse had a son 
Gerrit. known by his neighbors as "Pietem's Gat," to dis- 
tinguish him from the countless other Gerrits, or "Gats." 
Moreover, "Pietem's Gat" was also known as "Spyker-kop 
Gat." or "Nail-Headed Gat," meaning that his head was as 
hard as nails, and his disposition likewise. He had a dis- 
pute with his brothers and sisters about the division of 
some land, and straightway vowed that he would no longer 
use their family name, but would thenceforth be known 
only as Gerrit Van Wageningen. And so his descendants 
are called to this day. 

Jacob Waling's three children, baptized from 1650 to 
1655, were known as Jacobse, although the third, Symon 
Jacobse, wrote his name Symon Van Winkel, in making 
his will in 1722, presumably because his father came from 
the village of Winkel in Holland. 

I have already spoken of the children of Michiel Jansen, 
who were known as Michielsen. or son of Michiel. Elias 
Michielsen was a member of the East Jersey Assembly for 
several years, and by the Scotch clerk his name w^as 
recorded in the proceedings as Elias M'Kilson, from which 
you would inevitably jump to the conclusion that he was a 



SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 



good Scotchman. In the third generation the family took 
the name V'rcelaiul, probably from a Holland villaj^fe of 
that name, from whicii. perhaps. Michiel Jansen may have 
come. Michiel had a nnmlier of sons, and their progeny 
was also numerous, so that to distinguish the several stocks 
it was customary, until within half a century, to add to a 
son's name the name, initial, or abbreviation of his father's 
name: thus. John J. Vreeland meant John son of John 
Vreeland; John Ja. Vreeland, or Elias Ja. Vreeland indi- 
cated to the initiated that a son of Jaojb Vreeland was 
meant; to make it still clearer we sometimes find John Ja. 
El. Vreeland, meaning John son of Jacob son of Elias 
Vreeland. And 1 assure you, that if you had occasion to 
search the title to some of the Vreeland lands, and they 
cover many broad acres in the present cities of Paterson and 
Passaic, you could not be too grateful for these helps to 
identify the descent of the owners. 

Hessel Pieterse's descendants had less disposition to 
change, and from generation to generation simply rung 
the variations — Pieter Hesselse, Hessel Pieterse, Pieter 
Hesselse, Hessel Pieterse. 

Reyer Reyerse had sons Adriaen, Marten, etc. Some of 
Adrian's children have always retained the name Adrianse, 
or Adriance; some of Marten's children took the name Mar- 
tense, while the other descendants of Reyer Reyerse are 
known as Ryerson, and a widespread family they are. in the 
United States and Canada. 

Uriaen Thomasse was another of the Acquackanonk 
patentees: he was from Rypen, in North Jutland, and hence 
most of his descendants took the name Van Rypen. now 
usually written Van Riper. But the patronymic practice 
persisted for several generations in this family. On one 
occasion I was puzzled for a long time in tracing the title 
to a tract of land which 1 knew had come down from the 



10 SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 

Van Ripers, but to my surprise I found that in 1771 it was 
devised by one Cornelis Aeltse, and I could not find how or 
when CorneUs Aeltse had acquired it, either by purchase or 
by descent. At last it occurred to me that Cornelis Aeltse 
was the son of Aelt Van Riper, who had devised this prop- 
erty to his son Cornelis Van Riper. 

SOME LOST LINKS. 

This name Uriaen reminds me of the curious transforma- 
tions these odd Dutch names often undergo. Uriaen is 
evidently the equivalent of the Scriptural Uriah; but in 
Dutch it is pronounced Yurrie, and by an easy gradation 
this is frequently turned into Yerry, Jerry, and Jeremiah. 
Again, Y'errey's son would be called Yerreanse, and pres- 
ently you have Yereance, a numerous family in Northern 
New Jersey. 

These misinterpretations of names often lead to too hasty 
generalizations or inferences. In Sussex county, New 
Jersey, and in Orange county. New York, you will find the 
name Forgerson. "Evidently the Scotch Ferguson," you 
say. Not so, but from the Dutch Volkert, whence Volkert- 
sen, and by an easy transition, through the permutation of 
consonants, Volkerson, Folgerson. Forgerson. 

In the classic days of Holland it was quite common for 
scholarly men to translate their Dutch names into Latin or 
Greek, Erasmus being a famous example. So we have the 
names Marinus and Goetschius among the Dutch dominies 
of the eighteenth century, and the name Oblenus in the 
present. But you will generally find the latter painted or 
written after the Irish fashion, with a big O. an apostrophe, 
and a big B, as if it were Celtic, and not good old Latin- 
Dutch. It reminds me of a talented Polish music teacher 
we had a few years ago in Paterson, named Oborski. On 
one occasion a musical programme was printed, on which 
his name appeared as director. The local printer having been 



SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY I I 



accustomed to the name O'Blenus thought Oborski was of 

the same origin, and carefully set it up in tyi)e, "O'Borski." 
Whereat the wrath of the noble Pole was not soothed until 
he had thundered forth on the piano sundry selections from 
Wagner — something. 1 believe, like the (jotterdammerung, 
but minus a few syllables. 

I was once hunting up a Van Houten family, and at last 
found a very intelligent old lady of that particular ilk. 
When other data had been duly exacted I aune Ixick to my 
difficulty: "Your grandfather had a daughter Vrowetje." 
said I; "I have the record of her baptism, but nothing 
more." She smiled; "Vrowetje was my mother," she re- 
marked. "But I thought you said your mother was Fanny 
Van Houten." "And so she was," and again she smiled at 
my bewilderment. "You see, it was this way; when my 
mother went to school the teacher was an Englishman, and 
he could not twist his tongue around that big mouthful, 
and so he told my mother he would enter her name on 
the roll as Fanny, which, he said, was the Knglish for 
Vrowetje." As a matter of fact, Vrowetje means "little 
woman," and is a Dutch term of endearment, often given 
to children in baptism. I think it is sometimes mistaken 
in the records for "Vrontje." the "short" for Sophronia. 

Another puzzle came about in this wise : Dirck Van 
Houten, who died in 1812, had a number of children, 
among them Adriaen; he grew up and was married, as I 
found by the church record, but after that he disappeared. 
Some years later there was a deed from the children of 
Dirck Van Houten, and among them there was no Adriaen. 
but there was an Aaron, and it transpired beyond a doubt 
that Adriaen had changed his name to Aaron, evidently to 
avoid the confusion arising from the existence of a score or 
so of Van Houtens of the same baptismal name. 

Running through the northern part of Paterson is a 



12 SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 

pretty stream tumbling down over the mountains, and at 
last flowing- through one of our parks ere it merges into the 
Passaic river. Ihis stream was known by the Dutch as 
the Krakeel Val, or "quarreHng brook," perhaps the 
"brawling brook." But in our day it is only known as "the 
Molly Ann Brook" and thereby hangs a tale, which shall 
be made brief. This park was formerly part of the Van 
Houten domain. Here lived the widow Van Houten, 
Alolly, and she had a son, Adriaen, who was called Yawn 
for short; and because of his mother's strength of character, 
and to distinguish him from other Yawns, he was usually 
called "Molly's Yawn." When his mother died the brook 
aforesaid flowing through his lands was called "Molly's 
Yawn's Brook." It is an am.using illustration of the sim- 
plicity oif the olden days, and is an instance also of how 
easy it is to lose the sense of a name. 

Here is another problem : Hans Speer and Tunis Speer 
are common names. They settled among the Peers, who 
also have Hans and Tunis as ordinary Christian names. 
How was the Dominie or the Church clerk to make the nice 
distinction between Hans Speer and Hans Peer, or between 
Tunis Speer and Tunis Peer? Can you? I have no doubt 
they were often confounded in the records. 

Then, we have in our neighborhood the name Berry, and 
the name Bradbury, with intermarriages between them. 
One might easily jump to the conclusion that the name is 
the same; but not so. Further, there are two families 
named Berry among us : one descended from Captain John 
Berry, who came from Barbadoes, in the West Indies, and 
the other, which appears to be of Dutch origin, coming 
from Flushing, in Holland. 

I have spoken of the Dutch use of patronymics. Who 
would suppose that the Andersons, of Trenton and vicinity, 
were of Dutch descent? Yet they arc undoubtedlv de- 



SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY i ] 

sceiuled from Viulrics Iinhciii. an early sctllcr of New 
Amsterdam. And there is a Johnson family, of New 
Jersey, whom yon wonld certainly take to be of New Eng; 
land stock; bnt they trace their ancestry to Rut Jansen. m 
Rtio-er son of John, who located in Somerset county early 
i;i the eigiiteenth century. 

In the records of Somerset county and of New Bruns- 
wick you will rtnd two Cornclis Lows mentioned al»ut 
1750. You will naturally infer that the references are to 
the same man. On closer iiuiniry you find that one of the 
men was a surveyor, and the other a lawyer. Tracing the 
matter still further you will learn that one of these men is 
descended from a Long Island family, and the other from 
an L'lster county family, their respective progenitors not 
I>eing in the sliglitest degree akin, and not having the name 
Low at all. One of these families pronounces the name 
l^ow. as in the adjective so spelled, and the other is called 
Low. sounded as in the second syllable of allow. 

Captain .\driaen Post, of whom I have spoken, had three 
cliildren whose names we have not learned. There hap- 
pened to \yp. two or three other men named Post in Xew 
Amsterdam, alxait his time, who might have l)een his chil- 
dren, and some genealogists, with that tender regard we all 
have for orphans, have kindly fathered these misplaced 
Posts upon the Captain, witliout the slightest evideiice of 
his responsibility for them. They have even gone so far 
as to assign to him the parentage of one Jan Jansen. simply 
because at one time he carried the mail, and hence was 
called Jan Jansen Postmael, from which circumstance his 
descendants assumed the name Post, according to family 
tradition. But Captain Adriaen Post was one of tiie few 
immigrants to the Xew .Xethcrlands, as early as 1650. who 
already had a surname, and ilid not acquire it by any 
fortuitous circumstance in the new world. 



14 SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 



A member of the Degray family — prominent and numer- 
ous just north of Paterson for several generations — once 
assured me that his ancestors came from Scotland, and 
previously from France, whence the prefix "De," and he was 
greatly surprised when I showed him the will of his great- 
grandfather, Johannes de Graauw, unmistakably Dutch, and 
signifying "the gray." The name "De Groot" is also Dutch, 
simply meaning "the large," or "great." "Devoe," pro- 
nounced "Devoo," is undoubtedly French, the earlier spelling 
having been "Deveaux," with various modifications. The 
Demarest family are exceedingly numerous in Bergen 
County. In the older writings the name is frequently s^^elled 
"Demaray," which represents the pronunciation of the 
original name, "de Marais" or "de Maretz," as the primitive 
French ancestor was called. Then we have the name of one 
of the original settlers of New Brunswick, Cornelius Long- 
field, apparently an Englishman, but when we trace the name 
back to the earliest spelling, it appears as "Cornelis Lange- 
veldt," manifestly Dutch. Laroe is the Dutch spelling for 
La Rue, another Frenchman, 

THEIR PIETY. 

T have given you some idea of the pleasures, the conve- 
niences, and the puzzles experienced in tracing Jersey Dutch 
ancestry. You will pardon me if I say something of their 
characteristics. 

They were a God-fearing people, constant in their church- 
going. "All the great ages have been ages of belief," says 
Emerson. These men and women had the strongest kind 
of faith in the doctrines of the church. When those who 
assumed to be more orthodox than the rest led the great 
Seceder movement in 1827. the lines between the old and 
the new schools were so strictly drawn that fathers and 
children would not speak to each other, so intensely did 
they believe. A more kindly exhibition was their scrupu- 



SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY '5 



Ions care to keep the Poor-Giest of the diurch well supplied. 
The pious formula of their wills was u<>t peculiar to tlieui. 
but I think it correctly <lescril)e'l their views of death and 
of the resurrection, as in the will of Nicholas Vreeland. in 

1757: 

"I Nicholas Vreeland Ix^int,^ in health of Ixxly and in per- 
fect mind and memory Messed W (rt»d therefor and callin^^ 
to mind the mortality of my lyjdy and knowing- it is 
appointed for all men once to die do make and ordain this 
my last will and testament. First, I recommend my im- 
mortal spirit in the hands of my i^reat Creat<.ir trusting in 
the merits of my blessed Saviour for pardon and remission 
of mv sins and a happy admission in the regions of bliss 
and immortality." 

And who can l)ut l)e touched by the simple faith ex- 
pressed, tlunig-h often crudely, on their tombstones? As for 
example : 

When overwhelmed with grief 
My heart within me dies, 
Helpless and far from all on earth 
To heaven I lift mine eyes. 

And this composite injunction, somewhat haltingly ex- 
pressed : 

Go home my wife and children dear 
For I am not dead but sleeping here, 
Afflictions here long time I bore 
Physicians were all in vain 
I will remain here till Christ appears 
To meet in heaven again. 

The commoner version reads thus: 

Afflictions sore long time he bore 
Physicians v;ere in vain, 
Till God alone did hear him moan 
\t\(\ eas'd him of his pain. 



1 6 SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 



Another tombstone states in pleasing fulness : 

"He died from the kick of a horse." 
And adds with pious resignation : 

"This is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes." 

The following is strictly impersonal : 

This world is vain 

And full of pain. 

And grief and trouble sore 

But they are blest.y? 

Who are at rest, 

With Christ forevermore. 

The stonecutter had difficulties with this : 

Dear friends who live to mourn and weep 
behold the grave wherein i sleeP, 
prepare for death for you must dei 
and be intomb<^, as well as i 

Verily, as Maeterlink says : 

"The Angel of Sorrow can speak every language — there is not a 
word but she knows." 

In another churchyard, a few miles from Paterson, is a 
tombstone of granite, in two sections, one inscribed with the 
name of the husband, and the other with that of his wife, 
and beneath, running under both, is the affecting and sug- 
gestive scriptural quotation, slightly modified : 

We have fought a good fight. 

In the same yard. I am told, but I have not seen it. is a 
couplet which tells a whole story: 

I came up here to see my mother 
Death took me instead of another. 



SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 17 



Tliere is a gratifying- particularity of historical detail, 
combined with attention to rhyme and rhythm, on a l()ml> 
stone at Belleville : 

Sacred to the imiiuiry of Jacol) Perrinc 
Who died April I3tli in the year 1730 
He died from a blast in the Copper Mine. 

And what a tragedy in that other inscription in the same 
churchyard, chronicling the drowning oi a lad of eight 
years : 

In vain were all attempts to save 
From sinking in a watery grave, 
But now his spirit swims above 
In rivers of delight and love, 
Secure from every wave of woe 
Where deadly streams can never flow. 

One cannot help thinking — what a pity he did not learn 
to swim while here ! 

ANTI-RACE .SUICIDE. 

These old Jersey Dutch people had none of the fears of 
MaJthus and their practice certainly shows that they were 
opposed to race suicide. Symon Jacobse Van Winkel, 
kiptized in 1655. and who died in 1732, left twelve chil- 
dren him surviving. One of his sons, Simeon, had twenty 
children, of whom thirteen survived their father. It is 
related that he carved their initials and dates of birth on his 
doorposts, and when they ran out he carved the rest on a 
broad smooth stone in the front of the house. .\nd what a 
roll-call that must have l)een when he summoned his brood 
at dusk, to see that none were lost, strayed or stolen — 
Abraham, Johannes. Simeon. Jacob. Antie. Feytie. Saertje, 
Trijntje, Rachel. Jenneke, Leena, Marregrietje, Geertje, and 
others who died young. 



1 8 SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 



A simple calculation shows that in the tenth generation 
back a man's ancestors will number 1.024, provided there 
have been no intermarriages. I think most of the Jersey 
Dutch people of Passaic and Bergen counties today can 
trace their ancestry to at least six or eight of the fourteen 
Patentees of 1685, and I am sure that in a large percentage 
of cases their ancestors in the tenth generation would not 
number one hundred persons. This reduces the appalling 
immensity of the task which we have estimated confronts 
the genealogist. 

PERSISTENCY OF THE TYPE. 

There are many descendants of the original settlers who 
still live on the ancestral acres, greatly shorn, it is true, 
but they cling to them with the love of the farmer for 
the land. All thro' Bergen and Passaic counties may be 
seen the old type of low stone house, often with eaves pro- 
jecting far out, so as to form a roof for a broad veranda. 
Usually the old houses were one story in height, with 
spacious, open attic. The people usually stay with the old 
church, and they keep up many of the old customs. They 
are a sturdy stock, and none is more valued in Northern 
New Jersey. 

The original settlers, v/ith scarcely an exception, were of 
the plain common people — peasant farmers or artisans. I 
have never found any evidences among them that they 
were entitled to bear arms in the mother country — I mean 
in the heraldic sense. No one who has read a page of 
the history of that splendid nation doubts that its people 
proved their right and their willingness to bear militant 
arms in its defence. But very seldom indeed have I found 
any indication that the Jersey Dutch people were at all dis- 
posed to patronize the coat-of-arms manufacturer. They 
are content to know that their ancestors were of good, 
clean, decent stock, and they are proud of their origin. 



SOME JERSEY DUTCH GENEALOGY 19 



Macaulay has said tluit a i)(.'i)[)le which takes no pride in 
the noble acluevements of remote ancestors will never 
achieve anythini^;- worthy to he remcml)ercd with pride hy 
rcnjote descendants. 

From my own exi)erience, 1 am snre that the (ieneidog-ist 
will tind no pleasanter tield for research, and no worthier 
subject, than the original Jersey Dutch and their descendants. 



MB -3& 




















.^ .. 











4 o 



.s^p 



^Vv^. 



^ "^ '^i^P/ ^ -^ \^<«^.^ .^ ^^ 














^^-'^^ 



■»^ . « • 



o . o - ^^O" ts> 








0' 







> 



\^ .. -i- '"'° f^ V, •-* .<^^ 

\/ -'^^^'■- %.** »*i%'- \./ .*isS&'- %<** . 



<i-' 



" o ^ 




A 



■^^ 










"o V 























0' -^ ^«,,. ^v 




''^, 




0-' "hr. 



v^' 










.■K<=U 



it' o 



,0-v: 






^^^ 



^°' 






%: 






o^. 


"> 








^ 


<^^ 

-A^ 


V -' 












'- 


\'.**. 


r 




,.<\ 




^ 


• * 

0^ 



<?' 



DOIBS BROS. 

LISIUtItT SINOIMa 

7 

N 
ST. AUGUSTINE 

^^\ FLA. 
V..' y 32084 



